Vigilante Training 101
by MissScorp
Summary: Light learns that if he is going to become Batman, he needs to think like Batman. A gift!fic for Captain Zangano.
1. Quit

**A/N:** Hello m'dears… and welcome!

This is a gift!fic for the wonderful Captain Zangano to say thank you for your friendship, your support, and your encouragement!

**Disclaimer:** I own nada but my horrible sense of humor and idea :) apologies if the characters are not completely as they should be...

**S/N**: This story is based off one of Captain's stories: **Vigilante**

* * *

Light nicknamed Nightwing the _man-of-a-thousand-torture-techniques-masquerading-as-training-seminars _after the sadistic taskmaster had him:

March up a mountain in the freezing cold wearing nothing but training pants while carrying a huge pack of gear on his back (he'd only gotten frost bite and pneumonia from that bout of training).

Dive into a burning building in order to rescue some people who'd gotten trapped by the blaze (he'd received first degree burns, passed out from smoke inhalation and needed saving by Batgirl that time).

Run through a maze in order to deactivate one of those ridiculous riddle traps of the Riddler's before he could fry some politician (he'd ended up short circuiting the system and frying half of the power in Gotham).

Swim through an underwater channel to deactivate a bomb planted beneath a hospital (he'd gotten caught in a trap and needed Nightwing to rescue him while Red Robin stopped the bomb from exploding).

And the final (and Light thought the absolute worst) was to urban climb up the side of a building in order to stop some guy threatening to blow up an orphanage in the city if his lover wasn't released from Blackgate (that resulted in a sprained ankle and Nightwing having to do the job himself while Light laid there and listened to Ryuk laughing uproariously at his inability to "get two feet off the ground.")

Now, his torment-er _trainer,_ he mentally corrected, had come up with a whole new way in which to remind Light that fighting crime was a physical business. As if the bruises on top of the bruises still on his backside from his failed attempt at edificeering weren't enough of a reminder. He tested the pole with his hand, found the wood to be as smooth as silk. He tried to climb it as Nightwing had showed him...

...only to slide right back down as soon as both feet were off the ground.

"Hey, Light?" Ryuk asked as Light studied the twenty-five foot high pole with a frown. "How come it's taking you so long to learn how to become Batman?"

A scathing look was the only answer he gave before he went back to his goal of figuring out how to get to the flag at the top of that pole with the least amount of trouble (and injury). The Shinigami was nonplussed at his glare and continued talking (much to Light's vexation).

"You decided you were going to play Batman," he pointed out while spinning in his computer chair.

"I know that."

"Well, doesn't that mean you need to be able to do more than just dress up in his suit, use his toys and ride around in his Batmobile?"

Light glared at Ryuk. "It's just taking a bit longer than expected is all."

"Hyuk. Why don't you just admit that you make a terrible Batman?"

Light decided that he needed to go about researching how to muzzle a Shinigami. He got back up and planted his fists upon his hips while he worked out what exactly he was doing wrong.

Ryuk bounced around in his chair and peered at him with wide, hopeful eyes. "Do you think we can ask Nightwing if he will take us out in the Batboat next?"

"No."

"Please?" he whined. "I really want to take a ride in the Batboat before he decides to kick you out of here for being a bad Batman."

_Scrap the muzzle_, Light decided as he again approached the poll. He was just going to find a way to ship the Shinigami off to Siberia. Ten minutes later, however, Light was no closer to figuring out how exactly he was to climb that pole without sliding back down as soon as he got a few inches off the ground.

"Hey, uh, Light," Ryuk called out. "What's it mean when humans say _give up while you're ahead?"_

Light ignored him and just sat on the ground in front of the pole.

"Perhaps you should examine what Nightwing said, sir," Alfred suggested politely.

Light peered up at him, thankful that Ryuk had stopped spinning in his chair (though a haunted Batcave might be a workable explanation...), and scratching his nose with the tip of one finger. "He said to get the flag at the top of the pole."

Alfred nodded and Light saw there was a slight twinkle in his eyes. "Yes, but he did not say _how_ you needed to get the flag down, now did he?"

And with that final parting comment, the butler turned and exited the cave. Light watched him, wondering what he meant. Then a bulb went on inside Light's head. _Of_ _course! _he thought.

It took him most of the night, and required quite a lot of tools in order to pull off, but it was worth it when Nightwing entered the cave the following morning to find that the pole had been chopped into thirty neat piles of firewood. The flag Light proudly displayed from the back of his Lay-Z-Boy chair.

"I see that you managed to retrieve the flag," Nightwing said with a certain degree of pride in his voice. Or maybe it was just that Light had finally managed to show that he was good at something _other_ than computers.

"You said that I was to get the flag down," Light said with a smug grin. "But you didn't say how I was supposed to do it."

"No, I didn't say how you were to get the flag down," Nightwing agreed with a small smirk. "That was the point of the lesson."

Light goggled at him. "What?"

Ryuk laughed. "You sweated over how to get that flag for nothing!"

Light vowed to get even with the Shinigami. For the moment he just continued glaring at the masked man. "And what am I supposed to have learned from this lesson?" he gritted.

"If you are going to be Batman," the older hero explained patiently. "Then you need to think like Batman. He always fought smarter, not harder." He turned away, but not before saying, "I cut the pole down, too." Light felt his left eye twitch, but Nightwing continued on, not disturbed in the least by the looks of death his back was getting. "And now that you _are_ thinking like Batman, the real training can begin."

Light gulped. "Real training?"

That didn't sound... good. A fact which Ryuk helpfully pointed out to him.

"Hey, Light," Ryuk said. "I think you should throw in the towel before you end up in a wheelchair."

At the end of the day Light vowed to not only ship the Shinigami off to Siberia, but to send the newly dubbed _Torturer-of-Light_ right along with him.


	2. Bubble Bath In Gotham Harbor

**A/N:** This chapter is a gift!fic for the wonderful Captain Zangano whose birthday it is! Happy Birthday Captain!

Big thank you to NeoMiniTails for helping me look this over and make sure I wasn't out of my gourd :)

* * *

L poured himself a cup of coffee, then grabbed a sugar cube from the bowl and added it to the steaming liquid. He added a second, then a third. He vaguely heard the strike of a match and then heard a sigh as Mogi took a drag from the cigarette he'd just lit. He smirked as he slowly stirred the black tar with a pink swizzle stick. They both had their addictions-L his craving to sugar and Mogi to his cigarettes. L didn't particularly see it as a problem, but everyone else on the NPA team seemed to. _Not that I care_. No, as long as they did their part in bringing Kira to justice, L couldn't give a fig about what they thought. Or in how they viewed him.

He took a sip of the syrupy brew while browsing the current news headlines on his computer. It'd been an extremely frustrating five weeks for the detective. Kira's kill rate had tapered off eight weeks ago, resurged with a vengeance two weeks later, and then trickled off to nearly nothing about two weeks after that. It was almost as if Kira took a vacation after the first series of murders, returned briefly to commit the next set and then went on vacation again. _If I didn't know Kira better, I'd say he was doing this simply to taunt me_.

Of course, it had also occurred to him that the change in Kira's killing pattern also coincided with his prime suspect's relocation to the United States. It was extremely suspicious that Kira's pattern had changed right after Light left to attend Princeton University. Just why everything had changed with Light's leaving was another matter entirely, though. It didn't make any sense to him. If Light wasn't Kira (and L couldn't prove yet that he was or wasn't), then the change in pattern made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

He could tell the rest of the NPA members were feeling just as frustrated as him, though Matsuda had stupidly suggested in their last meeting that maybe Kira had just decided getting caught wasn't worth it and gone away. _No, that doesn't fit with Kira's profile at all. Kira would never go away just because he feared getting caught. That isn't Kira at all. He's up to something. I just know he is._

He just didn't know what Kira might be up too.

_Yet_.

It was never a question about whether or not he'd figured out what Kira was planning. He'd work night and day until whatever it was Kira was planning was revealed to him. Then he'd see the fanatical murderer brought to justice. He'd made it his life's mission to see Kira locked in a cage. If the case hit a dead end, well, L could always take on other cases and focus on them while waiting for Kira to resurface. Serial killers could never stop killing for long. Kira'd be back. L knew it. Just as L knew he'd be there to catch him when he did.

L scanned through various news articles. His eyes widened when he spied a headline in _The Gotham Gazette_: **Black Mask And Gal Pal Dies In Mysterious Blaze, Antonio Maroni And Ten Associates Die In Suspicious Car Bomb, Riddler Found Dead In A Puzzle Box**.

L slammed his coffee mug down, sloshing hot liquid all over the table. _Could it be_? He clicked on the link and quickly scanned the article for the most relevant information. The photographs he saved for closer examination later. The real guts of the story though? Well, that was in the details. A predatory light trickled over L's face as he dissected the reporter's words.

"Is it you, Kira? Have you surfaced across the ocean?"

Excitement sang in his veins. He looked up the location of the deaths. _Gotham_. Interesting. That was in the Northeastern part of the United States, near the Canadian border. _I wonder_... A quick search showed him that Princeton was only about an hour and twenty minutes south of the city. Not exactly a huge distance, even though the traffic in the area could make it difficult for Light to continue his activities as Kira (if he, indeed was the homicidal maniac).

_Perhaps_, the world's greatest detective mused, _it is time to make a phone call to Batman_.

He reached for the phone at the same time as he snagged a jelly filled doughnut from the box Misa had conveniently just set on the table. 

* * *

For day twenty-five of what he deemed "Torture Light" month, the great Tormentor known as Nightwing decided it was time that the new Batman learned how to use his cape and glide across short distances. Six hours and a thousand dunks in the frozen brine of Gotham Harbor later, the frazzled superhero was forced to admit that maybe gliding wasn't going to be something that Light was going to successfully learn how to do.

"I guess we can fashion you a Batsuit without the cape," he told Light while Ryuk laughed uproariously from the ledge above. "But it means you'll have to figure out how to get across longer distances without a cape to help you. And," he added on a sigh, "you'll have to get better at swinging, too."

"Of course I will," Light muttered beneath his breath. "I don't know how I could have allowed myself to believe it would be anything otherwise."

"Hyuk," Ryuk chirped from above. "Guess it means you're going to have to learn how to redirect a swing before you end up kissing the wall."

Light swore he was going to make the Shinigami (and his _Tormentor_) pay. He pulled himself to his feet and stood there looking at the glittering city skyline in the distance. He vowed to make up for his wrongly killing Batman. He'd figure it out somehow, someway. He was nothing, if not resourceful. His earpiece chimed then, interrupting his dark thoughts.

"Sir," Alfred said. "A Detective Lawliet is requesting a phone meeting with Batman about an urgent matter."

_Shit_...

"Tell him that Batman will be available for a phone consultation with him tomorrow night at seven."

Not that he planned on actually _being_ available for that conversation, of course. But he didn't tell Alfred that. It was needs to know information, and while Light had come to somewhat trust the staid and proper butler, it did not mean he trusted enough to share his plans with him. Not that Light had any clue what his plans were, either. Exactly how he would manage to not be around when L called, he didn't know. But he'd figure out something.

"Very good, Master Light," was the butler's reply. "I shall inform Detective Lawliet to call tomorrow evening at seven."

_Shit_, was all Light could think again.

* * *

When L called at exactly seven the following evening to speak with Batman, the man who answered informed him in a stiff voice that the superhero had regrettably been called away to investigate how five hundred kilos of bubble bath had ended up in Gotham Harbor.

L did not, for one minute, think that it was a coincidence...


End file.
